


I Shouldn't Be Here

by catauthor



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Basically yuri goes to college and is the worst roommate ever, M/M, Slow Burn, except when otabek calls, he just wants to improve his english and leave, he's always angry, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8952745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catauthor/pseuds/catauthor
Summary: Yakov decides that Yuri needs to improve his English.Yuri just wants to go back to Russia





	1. A dart board with Viktor's face on it

Alex was excited about starting college. He had got into the University of Colorado on a football scholarship and was ready for to spend the year training and improving his skills. He, like all the other athletes here on scholarship, had moved in the day before orientation so that they could get their physicals done. He had arranged his things neatly, which was unlike him, but he wanted to make a good first impression on his new roommate, after all, they were going to be spending a year together. 

Alex was prepared for anyone to walk through the doors, maybe someone who studied all day, or someone who partied constantly and came home drunk, or even a complete slob. He was Alex, most popular guy at his high school, he could overcome anything. But he was in no way ready for Yuri Plisetsky.

\---

Let’s just say that Yuri was not looking forward to college. Yakov had said that he needed to spend some time with a different coach for a while, in order to improve. Yuri was furious. His life was in Russia and he did not, not in any way, want to leave. The only reason he came was because Yakov had insisted that this would make him better. Yuri would do anything to be the best.

“But why America?” Yuri had asked Yakov. “Americans don’t like Russians. They think we’re communist freaks or something.” 

“You need to improve your English, Yuri.” This was true. Yuri’s English was horrendous. He had spent his entire life in Russia, he trained all day, and barely had enough time to do his school work. This didn’t leave much time to become good at the language. “The public will like you more.”

“English is a stupid language anyway. Why don’t they just learn Russian?”

“Because that’s how the world works.” Yakov dismissed Yuri with a wave of the hand.

\---

Yuri had arrived. He was furious, as anyone would be, being forced to leave your country and family and getting thrust into a country in which you don’t even know the language. Yuri was determined. He would get better and stronger and then Yakov couldn’t argue when he asked to go home. 

Yuri came into his new room while Alex was lying on his bed looking through his course catalogue. Alex looked up when he saw a guy walk into his room, muttering angrily to himself. He was quite short, extremely skinny and had long blond hair, like longer than he’s even seen on a guy. It would’ve reached his mid-back, Alex supposed, if it hadn’t been messily braided into a plait that looked like it had been there for a week. The boy was dressed very strangely; tiger print jackets were not what most people would consider fashionable. 

Alex sat up on his bed and stuck out his hand. “Hey man, I’m Alex.” 

Yuri stared at his hand for a second and then ignored it. “Yuri.” He then turned around and began removing the things from his suitcase and shoving them into the drawers under his bed. 

Alex was confused but he wasn’t deterred. “Cool. So what are you majoring in.” 

Yuri was quiet for a few seconds. “Physics,” Yuri said with a strong accent which Alex couldn’t place.

“That’s cool,” he said happily. “I’m majoring in business.”

Yuri didn’t reply. Alex sat awkwardly on the edge of his bed. The room was silent. 

“So, where are you from? I’m from Vermont.” Alex was trying really hard here, what was this guy’s deal?

“Russia.”

“Oh. So I can’t really complain to you about distance, huh?”

Once again, Yuri said nothing in response. “You don’t talk much, do you?” At this point, Yuri had stood up and kicked all his draws closed. He placed something that looked like a very large ring box into the top drawer of his desk. 

“English is hard.” 

“So, why are you in Colorado?”

“I learn English and I leave.”

“Oh.” Just as he said this, Yuri’s phone started vibrating. He looked at the caller ID, made a face, picked up, and began yelling in Russian. He wasn’t just talking loudly; he was full on shouting.

Alex was surprised. He wasn’t expecting this to come from such a small, seemingly quiet, guy. Yuri must have been really mad at whoever this Viktor guy was. As soon as Yuri had hung up the phone, he stormed out of the room.

Alex flopped back onto the bed.

\---

Viktor, in Yuri’s opinion, was the worst thing to happen in the history of the world. Forget the World Wars, Viktor topped them. 

When Yuri had called Viktor, asking for his help to convince Yakov that sending Yuri to America was a bad idea, he had expected Viktor to be completely on his side. But Viktor, like the asshole he is, wasn’t. He thought it was a ‘good idea,’ and ‘Yakov has a point, you do need to improve your English.’ What an asshole! 

And so when he had received the call from Viktor today, he was mad.

Yuri paused and began ferociously kicking a nearby tree, imagining it was Viktor, until his foot began to hurt. He sat down and pulled out his phone, and sent a message to Otabek. 

‘This place is the worst. My roommate is an absolute moron and there are too many trees.’ 

Yuri waited for a while, getting more and more angry with each passing moment. It was only 11 AM in Colorado, which meant it was 10 PM in Almaty. Any normal person would still be awake at this time, but not Otabek. Otabek always went to bed on time, never ate junk food, and never did anything that could injure himself, excluding motor biking of course, and put him in jeopardy of not winning the competition. Otabek was so stupid and sensible.

But Otabek was Yuri’s best friend, and he knew how much of a big deal this day was. So, of course he woke up and called him back. 

Yuri got the call half an hour later, after he’d returned to his room because he was sick of being outside. Alex was unpacking some more boxes that had just arrived.

“Hey Beka,” Yuri said. Yuri’s voice had actually lowered to a reasonable volume and was no longer harsh and biting, as Alex noticed. 

“Hey Yura. How’s the place?” Although Otabek’s Russian wasn’t perfect it was nice to talk to someone in a language Yuri understood. 

“My roommate is some sort of sports freak,” Yuri said while watching Alex hang up photos of some sort of sports team next to a signed and framed jersey. 

“Yura, you’re a sports freak.” 

“Yeah, but I don’t outwardly show it by hanging stuff on my wall.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. You’re gonna have to put something on your side of the wall to balance out his sports freakiness. You don’t want to look like the boring roommate.”

Yuri huffed. “Okay, I will. I will put a dart board up with Yavok and Viktor’s faces on it. And then when I get bored of that I will replace it with a picture of JJ doing his stupid pose.”

Yuri assumed that Otabek was smiling at this point. “Ok Yura, it’s late and I have to go to sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, ok?”

“Yes, I’ll talk to you then. Bye Beka.”

Yuri lay down on his bed clutching his phone. Talking to Otabek felt like going home.


	2. The Russian Mafia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri really hates college, but Otabek understands.

Alex grew used to Yuri’s incessant aggressive Russian rap, his constant anger and the glares he sent Alex when Yuri walked in late on the weeknights. Alex wasn’t sure why Yuri seemed to hate him so much, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out. Some nights Yuri would home in with large stitches stretching across the length of his hand. He was constantly covered in bruises all over his back and sides. Alex knew this because Yuri often wore very little clothing, complaining loudly of the relentless Colorado heat.

Yuri never seemed to study, yet was always bringing back essays and assignments with large ‘A’s scrawled across the top. This angered Alex. He studied almost constantly when he wasn’t at football practice, and despite this, he was barely scraping through.

All in all, Yuri pissed him off.

\---

Yuri called Yakov every night after he returned from practice. The calls consisted of Yakov grilling him about his progress, whether he was eating right and was continuing to stretch. Yuri hated these calls. If Yakov was going to send him away, then he might as well just leave him alone. 

Then there was the call to Otabek. In Yuri’s mind, this was the only thing keeping him sane. They were usually short, but Otabek listened to Yuri and didn’t judge him for all his strong opinions. It was nice to hear Otabek talk about his life too. Because he was either on campus or at the rink he tended to forget that there was a world outside of his own. 

Alex learnt that this was the time to talk to Yuri, after his call ended. Although he often didn’t get much of a response, it was better than the usual aggression. Their conversations would usually go something like;

“Hey, Yuri.”

“Hi”

“How was your day.”

“Fine”

“Were your classes fun.”

“No.”

Alex felt like a mother trying to extract information from her unresponsive teenage son. Alex kind of understood. He too was tired and grumpy after his long days of classes and training, but he always tried to be a pleasant person to talk to. Yuri did not take this liberty. And Yuri didn’t even do anything all day. From what Alex could tell, Yuri went to class and then hung out with the Russian mafia until 9.30 at night. This seemed too early for the mafia to be done, but, of course, Alex had no experience with the Russian mafia. And how else could he explain his injuries? 

The other thing that confused Alex was Yuri’s hair. Yuri would brush his hair every night until it was knot free. During this process, he would swear constantly. Alex knew he was swearing because he had googled Russian curse words. Alex assumed that he was swearing at his hair. So why didn’t Yuri just cut it off? What positive effect was it having on his life? Maybe it was a requirement for being in the Russian Mafia. Alex just had no idea.

Sometimes Alex’s friends would come over before they went out on the weekends. Alex could safely assume that this did not make Yuri very happy because of the loud groans and angry muttering. Alex assumed this was because Yuri didn’t have any friends. His demeanour and resting bitch face seemed to repel people from wanting to be around him. 

Sometimes girls would try to talk to him. He saw them walk up to him in the cafeteria and begin talking. Yuri usually just left his in headphones in until they got the message and went away. Alex could see the appeal. The mysterious foreign guy with an accent and long hair was a thing that he knew girls loved from living with his two sister’s his whole life. Alex wasn’t complaining, though, he was getting plenty attention from girls too, which he, unlike some people, was actually appreciating. 

\---

If there was one thing Yuri hated the most about college, it was the classes. English was stupidly hard and all of the other students looked at him weird when his notes weren't in the Latin alphabet. He couldn't understand why these idiots couldn't grasp the fact that not everyone spoke English, and that there were other languages out there. He could even argue that Russian was just as important and English, it was one of the United Nations official languages after all. 

He also hated the compulsory maths class he had to take. Maths was another stupid subject and the teacher spoke too fast and had an extremely boring voice. It didn't help that he enjoyed using long words so freely. 

In fact, this whole thing was stupid. Yuri wasn't even sure this experiment was helping his skating. The stress of school certainly wasn't. 

Otabek could kind of relate to these struggles, despite going to school in Kazakhstan. But Otabek was really smart and was studying a subject he actually enjoyed, which Yuri thought was crazy, Physics. Otabek would tell him about the professors with monotone voices, the ones who went too fast and the ones who assigned too much homework. Yuri liked knowing that he wasn't the only one who had these complaints. It made him feel normal. 

The only reason Yuri was doing so well was because he was constantly asking his professors for extra help. Not understanding made him so incredibly angry. He hated sitting surrounded by people who wrote notes furiously and made ‘ah’ sounds. If he couldn't understand them in class, he sure as hell was going to understand it after. 

The professors grew to know how his angry footsteps thudded down the hall, how his accent got thicker as he got angrier and his insatiable need to understand everything. Some appreciated this, but most did not. 

His weekends were his escape. Alex spent most of his time at football practice and then getting hammered at a party. Any time in between was spent at the library. Yuri only knew this because Alex informed him of his every waking move. Yuri cared about as much as a blue whale cared about the annual vegetable crop. 

Yuri appreciated having the room to himself. His coach only made him practice in the morning, claiming that ‘coaches have lives to’. Since when?  
Yuri and Otabek used these long stretches of time to talk when they didn't have to worry about classes and time zones. Yuri would stay up late and they would talk about everything under the sun. 

They sent each other letters too. Yuri kept his in a blue and gold folder which was tucked carefully into a drawer in his desk. Otabek said that letters were fun because you could find out what people were thinking last week. Yuri thought it was because Otabek was an old fashioned dork. He only went along with it because he liked having his letters handed to him in the dining hall, making people think he was more important than he actually was. 

Along with the long, neatly written letters, Otabek sent him things to hang on the walls. He had a massive Russian flag, a picture of him at the last three Grand Prix’s, standing on the respective podiums, Otabek next to him in the latest two. There were postcards of the various places he had travelled to. He had posters of musicians he liked and pictures of his family. 

The latest edition was a large banner stretching almost all the way along the wall. Otabek had made it for him after Yuri had revealed his troubles with motivation. It was red and was painted in sparkly gold paint with the phrase ‘Коньки для золота’ (skate for gold). Looking at it was what got Yuri out of bed in the morning and encouraged him to go to sleep at a reasonable time at night. 

Yuri sent Otabek things too. They were usually ridiculous things he found at shops that served no purpose or books that he thought Otabek would like. He could agree with Otabek that it was a nice idea. He liked knowing that Otabek was receiving the things he sent and they were inevitably ending up in his house.

It made him feel undeniably happy, but Yuri put this down to home-sickness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this at the beach while I was trying to avoid serious sunburn. I hope you guys enjoy, and thank you for all the kudos and comments you left on the last chapter. They made me really happy. I hope you enjoyed xx


	3. Emotions, For Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri and Otabek get their competition placements and Alex is confused.

When the placements for the preliminary competitions were announced, Yuri and Otabek made sure that they were on a skype call. Alex was sitting at his desk wondering what was so great in Yuri’s life that could make his usually angry roommate look simultaneously constipated and excited. 

Otabek’s email came in first, but Yuri refused to let him open it until his arrived too. They were making awkward conversation, both too nervous to act like functioning members of society when Yuri got the text from his coach. 

On the count of three, they both opened their respective messages. Yuri cheered loudly, warranting a brief glare from Alex, and Otabek’s features moved slightly into what Yuri understood as his ‘excited beyond belief’ face. 

“Who wants to go first,” asked Yuri.

“You seem more excited, you go.”

“You’re excited too, asshole, I can tell.”

“Just go.”

“Fine. I get to go back to Russia, I’m going to the Rostelecom Cup, as well as the Cup of China.” Yuri delivered this news with a huge smile on his face, confusing Alex even more. Yuri had never shown this much emotion in the short time they’d been roommates. 

“That’s great Yura.”

“Well, what did you get?”

“I’m going to Skate America and the Cup of China.”

“Fuck yeah!” Cheered Yuri. “We can see each other in China and you can come visit me in college when you’re in America. This will be so great.”

“I’d love to visit you. I want to meet this terrible roommate you’ve been telling me about.”

“Yes, please. I need someone to understand how infuriating he is. Viktor just says I need to be ‘nicer’ and Mila says I need to stop glaring.”

“Maybe you should do those things.”

“I will hang up on you and refuse to take any calls for a week if you don’t take that back immediately.”

“Ok, ok. I take it back.”

“Thank you.”

Their conversation finished soon after and Yuri looked the happiest Alex had ever seen him. 

“What are you so excited about?” Alex asked.

“I get to go back to Russia soon and my friend’s going to visit soon.”

“Cool.” Alex wanted to continue the conversation but Yuri had jammed on his earphones and was blaring some uncharacteristically loud classical music.

\---

Yuri threw himself into his practice after that. He came home achy and tired and not always entirely satisfied. Despite all of his hard work, he didn’t feel like it was enough. He needed it to be enough. He needed to beat JJ and Phichit and Leo and all the others. He needed to prove to Yakov that he could go back to Russia. He needed to prove himself.

For Alex, this recent development was bittersweet. For one, Yuri was around a lot less so he didn’t have to deal with his punishing glares and angry aura. But when he was around, he was so much worse. He yelled and groaned and huffed. It was like living with a caged animal. 

For Yuri, this was also bittersweet. Because he was putting so much time into his training, the days went faster. He was getting closer to his return to Russia and visiting his best friend. It was also bad because he came home so exhausted that he fell asleep before being able to message Otabek.

\---

Yuri hadn’t made many friends at university. He went to the international student’s meetings every week but spent his time glowering in the corner. He was supposed to have a local student show him around the town, but whoever it was had stopped texting him after meeting Yuri for the first time. Yuri might’ve screamed at him the whole time. It wasn’t like Yuri minded not having any friends, he’d never had any before, but it was strange. It was strange because Yuri didn’t have anyone in his life. He used to have his grandpa, and when he was in Japan he had Viktor, but here he had no one. Yuri didn’t want to spend time with his rink mates because they didn’t have the same motivation that he did. They didn’t push themselves, and they didn’t have to prove themselves. 

That, Yuri supposed, was why he got on with Otabek so well. Otabek was the same as him. They both had to prove themselves. Otabek had to prove himself to his country, and to his family so they knew that all the years without him were worth it. He had to prove himself to the world, he had to show them that a skater from Kazakhstan was just as good as anyone else. Yuri had to prove that he was worthy of his world titles and that his changing body wasn’t going to hinder him. He had to prove that he could return to Russia.

Otabek understood Yuri’s drive and all-consuming need to do well in the competitions. Otabek understood Yuri’s feelings of inadequacy and his anger. Not talking to Otabek was like losing his support system. It was like drowning.

Yuri missed Otabek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, i suck. It's been almost a month since I last updated, and that is for the one reason that I'm an extreme procrastinator.   
> I want to thank all of you for your comments, they really encouraged me to continue, so thank you so much.  
> Next time it takes ages for me to update yell at me on tumblr - 12dayss.tumblr.com  
> Thanks for reading and i hope you enjoyed.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys,  
> this is my first ever fanfiction so please be nice, but I do appreciate constructive criticism. This is also un-beta-ed so sorry for any errors. Send me requests for anything you want to happen with this, I'd love ideas. Thanks so much for reading.  
> xx Georgia


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